Barcelona star Lionel Messi will appeal a Spanish court decision that sentenced him to 21 months jail for tax fraud and slapped them with a fine of 3.7 million euros ($4.1 million) on Wednesday.

The court in Barcelona said in a ruling that Messi and his father defrauded the Spanish tax office of almost 4.2 million euros between 2007 and 2009 by using a web of shell companies to evade taxes on income from the player’s image rights.(AP Photo)

Barcelona star Lionel Messi will appeal a Spanish court decision that sentenced him to 21 months jail for tax fraud and slapped them with a fine of 3.7 million euros ($4.1 million) on Wednesday.

The Spanish court handed the same sentence to the Argentine player’s father, Jorge Horacio, with a 1.5 million euro fine. Both defendants said they would appeal to the supreme court.

The Argentine’s lawyers feel an appeal would eventually succeed in persuading the court that Messi and his father have behaved correctly, the players representatives told AFP.

“The sentence is not correct and we are confident the appeal will show the defence was right,” Messi’s lawyers said in a statement. They added Messi had always acted in good faith.

Spanish law is such that any sentence under two years for a non-violent crime rarely requires a defendant without previous convictions to serve jail time. A spokeswoman for the court confirmed that Messi, 29, was unlikely to be imprisoned.

Messi, five times World Player of the Year and one of the world’s highest-earning athletes with an estimated income of $350 million in the past 10 years, plays for Barcelona football club where he is the leading goal scorer of all time.

The court in Barcelona said in a ruling that Messi and his father defrauded the Spanish tax office of almost 4.2 million euros between 2007 and 2009 by using a web of shell companies to evade taxes on income from the player’s image rights.

The companies - with names such as Sport Consultants and Sport Enterprises - were based in countries such as Belize, Uruguay, Switzerland and Britain where legislation kept the identities of their owners secret, it said.

Messi admitted during the trial in early June to signing contracts protecting his image rights but said he had no knowledge he was committing any wrongdoing or defrauding the Spanish state.